Continued from here …

 

Exercise Routines

Assuming you are a beginner, my suggestion is to just get started!  There are many styles of muscle building and many routines.  In terms of styles, I recommend:

  • Traditional strength.  This is a good starting point because gaining strength will be a good baseline even if you want to focus on building size or improving athleticism. 

  • HIIT (High intensity interval training). This is a more dynamic form of weightlifting and burns more calories, which is great if you want to also lose weight.

Strength Training

You can find many sources of information on strength training.  In fact, that’s the problem, there are too many!  If you are just beginning, I recommend:

  • Stronglifts 5x5.  This is a classic strength training program and the basis for many other workouts you can find.  It requires a barbell and I strongly recommend a power rack for safety.  

  • Athlean-X.  Jeff is a well known fitness advisor and solid source of advice.  You can find many useful videos of his for free on YouTube (perhaps too many!) and his routines are forsale on his site.  There are routines that match various levels and equipment from bands to dumbbells to barbells.

HIIT

As with strength training, there are many sources of HIIT routines out there. If you are just beginning, I recommend:

  • Fitness blender. This is a free set of high quality works for beginners to intermediate.  It includes many great HIIT routines as well as other kinds of workouts and stretching.  They generally require no equipment or a set of dumbbells. 

  • Men’s health spartacus workouts. These are a set of clearly described, well designed workouts that give a great full body workout that builds strength, athleticism and burns calories.  They require dumbbells. 

Equipment

How you build muscle will also depend on what equipment you have.  I recommend starting with:

  • dumbbells or 

  • resistance bands 

These two choices are cheap and don’t take up much space.  

If you are more serious, you will want to go to a gym equipped with a traditional barbell and a power rack or buy a power rack for yourself. You can buy this equipment at various manufacturers like:

  • Rogue Fitness- top of the line.  All made in the USA.

  • Rep Fitness - a little cheaper but still higher quality than most home lifters need.

  • Titan- a little cheaper still, but still very good.